MEXICO CITY – Governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Alfredo del Mazo won the gubernatorial election in Mexico state, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area, garnering 33.7 percent of the vote, with 97 percent of the ballots counted, election officials said Monday.

Leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) candidate Delfina Gomez finished second, getting 30.8 percent of the vote, while Juan Zepeda, of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), received 17.8 percent of the vote.

Josefina Vazquez Mota, of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), finished fourth, garnering 11.3 percent of the vote.

Voter turnout was 52.53 percent in Sunday’s election.

Del Mazo received 1.94 million votes, giving him a lead of nearly 167,000 votes over Gomez in the race to run Mexico state, the country’s most populous state and a region considered a barometer for the 2018 presidential election.

Voter turnout was 60 percent in Coahuila, which is in northern Mexico.

In the western state of Nayarit, Antonio Echevarria, the gubernatorial candidate of a coalition formed by the PAN, PRD, Workers Party (PT) and Revolutionary Socialist Party (PRS), got 38.6 percent of the vote.

Manuel Humberto Cota, candidate of a coalition formed by the PRI, Mexican Green Party (PVEM) and New Alliance, finished second, with 27 percent of the vote.

Hilario Ramirez, an independent, finished third, with 12.02 percent of the vote in an election with a 62.3 percent voter turnout rate.